Posts Tagged storytelling montreal

If you look closely you can see that there’s an email subject line called “Battlesweaters”

So about a year ago, 9to5 (dot cc) darling Al Lafrance (he attained the rank of “darling” by being a repeated guest on Go Plug Yourself and also writing a column here for a little while) asked me if I would ever be down to do a story at one of Montreal’s great storytelling shows: Yarn.

I told him I was definitely interested and was honestly kind of flattered that he asked me. To me (and yes, I know this is just my impression and Yarn goes out of its way to have stories from all over the place) these things are usually reserved for fancy pants performers and comedians. I mean, it’s not too much of stretch, I’ve got over 120 episodes of two different podcasts under my belt so I’m no stranger to talking and I stand up in front a few hundred people to announce roller derby for Montreal Roller Derby so I’m not stage shy. Add to that that I used to do Improv competitively back in CEGEP and I think I got this.

However, I couldn’t say yes at the time because a year ago I was in the thick of planning my wedding, and right after that we swung into looking for a new home.

Then a couple of weeks ago, he asked me again. I said yes, without any real idea of what kind of story that I would actually tell.

So I had to write something. Or, at least, formulate something that would translate into a story that I could tell. I’m not sure what anyone else’s process is for writing a story but I decided to write the entire thing out and re-work it and re-read it a few times a day until I more or less had the gist of it. And tonight I’ll just go up and let my improvisational side take over and steer the story in more or less the way I wrote it. I don’t think I work very well if I’m trying to force myself to commit something to memory.